Château Marjosse

The estate

Marjosse belonged to the Deleuze family. Alban Deleuze, a director of the Magasins du Louvre in Paris, added a large wing to the house, with marble fireplaces and basins from the Hôtel de Crillon, and his son Georges, a general, inherited it. In 1990 the Deleuzes rented some parcels to a young winemaker, Pierre Lurton, who had grown up at Château Reynier next door and learned his trade with his uncles André and Lucien at Clos Fourtet. The next year he was made manager of Château Cheval Blanc, and frost took the whole of the 1991 vintage at Marjosse. He moved into the manager’s house in 1992 with his wife and first child and bought the property piece by piece: in 2000 he built a cellar more than 180 meters long, with more than 40 concrete vats, and in 2013 the Deleuze heirs, the brothers François and Michel, sold him the rest, the stone chartreuse included. He restored it from 2014, and it is his home.

Marjosse is a hamlet of Tizac-de-Curton, near Branne, and its wine has a long, modest record. Édouard Féret, co-author of Bordeaux et ses vins, the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, found it in his Statistique générale of the Gironde of 1874 under Ducharpreau, making 5 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels) of red and 45 of white; his volume on the Libourne district gave it to Fouquet in 1897, with 15 tonneaux of red and no white, and the guide of 1922 to Dr Fauquez, mayor of the commune, with 30 of each. The vineyard of today, 40 acres, was first planted in the 1880s and replanted on American rootstock after phylloxera, and it grows Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle, with a few rows of Malbec from the 1940s.

Jean-Marc Domme has been winemaker and technical director since 2017, the year the parcels were first vinified separately. The red of 2019 came from clay and limestone, from vines 20 years old at 5,000 a hectare yielding 58 hectoliters a hectare; it had 20 to 25 days of maceration in concrete vats and 12 months in French oak, 50% of it new.

At a glance

Appellation

Bordeaux

Commune

Tizac-de-Curton, in the Entre-deux-Mers

Classification

No classification

Owner

Pierre Lurton; tenant from 1990, owner of the whole since 2013

Oenologist

Jean-Marc Domme, winemaker and technical director, since 2017

Vineyard

40 acres; first planted in the 1880s; Malbec from the 1940s

Grapes

Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Malbec; Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc, Muscadelle

Cellar

Built in 2000, more than 180 meters long, more than 40 concrete vats; the red of 2019, 12 months in oak, 50% new

In history

Ducharpreau, 5 tonneaux of red and 45 of white, in 1874; Dr Fauquez, 30 of each, in 1922

Sources: Château Marjosse, history · Château Marjosse, the estate · Château Marjosse, our wines · Château Marjosse, the red